Most read stories

Things of Beauty

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The cover features Lincoln as a woman. Lincoln as a woman is not a thing of beauty.

Any Given Recent Day

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Ten-year-old Bobby Akins learned that a shotgun shell struck on its brass end with a hammer can indeed take out the left eye of an eight-year-old brother observing the proceedings close by.

Dumb Luck and the Fall of Empires

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At some point we all reach the end point/ of something. Something important/ if only to our fragile self esteem.

Her Man in the Navy Blues

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In that time when the trunk was getting cleared out and when it became only the empty shell of what had once been so important, many things hit the match. She burned an old black negligee, a picture competing with the likes of a Vargas girl and other thin

The Voice of My Body

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It's saying, "It feels as if you've given me your old, your tired and your poor. I feel much older than the years you've logged."

Apex

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You left paint and blood smeared on the wall.

The Young Woman Swimming

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She stepped inlike ice alonecould save hershe dived,slicing the wavewith her body her fresh pony tailsubmergedlike a silk scarfthen swam moving thewater awaylike whirlpoolscould hold her buoyantly save her from the headachewhispering wordsThey had been there all…

Deadly duel: Blow v. Teach

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At last, we learn if Blow has the cojones to fight.

Tabula Rasa

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When I was younger, I tried very hard to be myself, but it never worked. I'd close my eyes, wait a beat, open them and slowly bring them into focus. This is the new me, the only me. Never worked, not once. It could only last a minute or two, so I…

reality concedes, for once

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beckoning with citrus streaks blue cobbled streets/and stuccos lit with gold lamps guide strollers here/to Place du Forum in Arles and this café . . .

Skin Wins

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One day, my feet and hands got into an argument. My feet argued that they were superior because they were not only the foundation of my body, but the cause of its mobility. They were modest in size, yet supported and transported an entire body that towered over them.…

Authenticity in a Time of Consolidation

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Culture gives what it feels you deserve/ in the cul-de-sac of your time and place.

Glass Rooster

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ghosts of the previous owners who leave a trail of whispers

To See Who's There

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Able to search through centuries, I click, scribble, skim,resurrect wet stone walls, the smell of burning peat.Bob's your uncle; Peggy's your aunt.Name your family, child. My brother said helloto Uncle Shirley and Aunt Greg. I was more…

Rain Typing

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"I'm just going to take a power nap!"

Possible Candidates for Reading to a Crowd

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"Possible candidates for reading to a crowd" the subject line of the email to myself read. You see, writing can be hard - or writing can be easy. But writing for a crowd you'll see is something else entirely.

###moth#7###

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what was she like you ask? smarter than me for instance she could type alot faster. and she didn’t worry constantly about being poor or having a family looking over her shoulder. maybe that’s what she did with boys. 17 years later and she is in my bed

Downtown Milwaukee

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Downtown Milwaukee My feet are exposed, never been out in public even out here— …

The Family Tradition

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Your father, his father, and his before that, your mother, her mother, and all the way back have kept a tradition by chance or by will to each have a baby (or several) until…

The Last Warrior

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His wings, like tiny shoots, grew a season in an instant. The pain was gone now. He rose up as effortlessly as centaurs run, as angels fly. "I will sing your name as my brother among my brothers," the Seraph promised. Kladius watched the beasts below

Magic Togs

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New Underwear

1980, What I Wanted

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Not to...Witness such sufferingWatch as a life fades awayReceive the callAttend this funeralBe surrounded by well meaning family and friendsStand by helplessly as my father sobs in his brother's armsNotice the pain settle in my brother's eyesSee my grandparents' tortured,…

Window

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Seen from the window, …

Old Friends Getting Older

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I just amuse myself by buying old guns and refurbishing them in my basement as I listen to old Bohemian polkas on cassettes.

Quittin' Ain't Easy

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Hey, Y'all! Like I told y'all, I checked myself into this what you call a “ facebook Rehab Clinic” up here just about 40 miles outside of Kalispell, Montana in a little town called Gulag. I quit MySpace and that got me a reduced rate. Things are…

Word Burglar

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Oh my god - A plagiarizing pony - I know someone must have said that before

Worry Is for the Well-Rested

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I'm in the boardroom, downtown in San Francisco. I don't even remember showing up for work today. I hope they fire me, just like they fired Bill. Well not exactly like that, that was awful. He was caught downloading a phenomenal amount of…

All his things

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All the things that are his.

A Record of Wrongs

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A dead deer on the side of the road and the older boys not listening to her as they stab its eye with a stick.

Ineluctable

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I attended the burial of our affair when I found the notebook-maybe it should be called her diary-she had foolishly forgotten, leaving it on the deck of my beach house where she stayed while I was on that short trip to Chicago and I was numbed at first, unsure how to…